2010 HSNCT discussion thread

[Frater Taciturnus]

Well now my question is: do bdelloids engage in Prophase I and not meiosis? If that is the case, Monica was wrong (albeit slightly hosed) and we can sleep easier. But, when I made this post last night, I was making the assumption that because bdelloids do not engage is meiosis, they also do not engage in Prophase I. If that is the case, then Monica was definitely right.

Bdelloid rotifers don't engage in meiosis and hence don't engage in substages of meiosis*, including prophase I. (Engaging in prophase I, which involves the deliberate formation of potentially lethal DNA damage, would be an extraordinarily costly maneuver for a creature that didn't proceed through the rest of meiosis and gain the benefits of sexual reproduction.)

(While bdelloids are considered to be the most definitive ancient-asexual eukaryotic taxa, there are a lot of critters that sexually reproduce only rarely, and plenty of putative "asexuals" have been found to actually engage in meiosis/sex--I assume that's why the tossup hedges a bit by saying they "appear" not to engage in meiosis.)

So then Monica was indeed correct when she buzzed. Now my question is: does someone have the scoresheet handy that can see how many points Maggie Walker earned on that bonus? If I'm not mistaken, the game was close enough that SC could have automatically won depending on how many points would have been subtracted from MW's score.

so then if "meiosis" or "prophase I" were not uniquely identified answers, then I believe this comes into play

Players may not protest that they gave an answer that was "correct when they buzzed" if their answer was not uniquely specified by the clues at the time that they signaled.

[Thundercougarfalconbird]

I might not be in the majority, but I felt that the math-comp questions were well-handled. The easy parts required math that could be done mentally in a second or two if one understood the theory behind the question (e.g., "What value is below and between the two 10s on the 6th row of Pascal's triangle?" or "In a truth table for p, q, and r, how many rows are there?"). Similarly, the hard parts required a deep understanding of the mathematics to be solved. Although some of the hard parts seemed to require more than five seconds' worth of calculation, I noticed that there seemed almost always to be a mathematical trick that made the calculation quite easy (e.g. finding a given value on the third diagonal of Pascal's triangle might seem difficult, but it becomes trivial if you know or can recognize that the third diagonal is just the triangular numbers).

So, in summary, I'm not sure exactly what people are upset about. If a team is consistently getting zeroes on mathcalc bonuses, they're clearly really weak in math, and if a team is getting thirties, they've got someone with relatively deep knowledge of whatever is being asked (truth-tables, integrals, Pascal's triangle, etc.). Most of the complaints seem to be coming from teams who are upset that they were unable to finish all of the allotted calculations in five seconds; to whom the only response is: getting a 30 at HSNCT shouldn't be easy; you aren't expected to be able to 30 the mathcalc bonuses, unless you have someone who knows enough math to simplify the calculations.

[Kanye West]

If a team is consistently getting zeroes on mathcalc bonuses, they're clearly really weak in math, and if a team is getting thirties, they've got someone with relatively deep knowledge of whatever is being asked (truth-tables, integrals, Pascal's triangle, etc.). Most of the complaints seem to be coming from teams who are upset that they were unable to finish all of the allotted calculations in five seconds; to whom the only response is: getting a 30 at HSNCT shouldn't be easy; you aren't expected to be able to 30 the mathcalc bonuses, unless you have someone who knows enough math to simplify the calculations.

Except that if one knew how to do all the bonuses, all it came down to was testing multiplication and addition speed, rather than actual knowledge. Take the integral bonus, for example. I think we ended up getting 10 on that bonus even though all four of us had taken at least Calc BC, because the two "harder" parts had fairly easy antiderivatives but the true speed test came with using the first FTC and coming out with a number all in under five seconds. Perhaps for that one case, it might have been better to use indefinite integrals instead of definite ones.

[matt979]

It seems more likely that we could get them to just record what rooms they were in when they had good or bad experiences. Even if you don't know people's names, which I totally understand, the rooms people are in are unchanged at least for all of Saturday. Blank cards to turn in somewhere after Saturday play, maybe, listing round number, room number, and comment? They wouldn't have to be any larger than the record cards turned in after saturday play.

This is the best idea I've seen so far to fix this problem.

I felt the moderators could be handled better. In one room, there were Ian and Guy, two people who easily got to 26 each. Meanwhile, in my room, we had someone who could only read 16 in a round, and me, who couldn't read due to my accent.

Harry, your room was Convention Center 52, I think? When I noticed a low tossup total on one scoresheet I meant to make a switch -- Ian or Guy would've been perfect in hindsight -- but then there were other fires to put out. (Although ironically if I had made the switch, Stephen's point above would no longer hold.) So this one's on me.

As Joel Gluskin mentioned in this thread, we're strongly interested in feedback on good/bad readers. I don't envy him the task of optimally staffing 67 game rooms. Most of the time there's a high correlation between being good at playing quiz-bowl and being good at reading quiz-bowl, though come to think of it the exceptions to this would be more likely noticed by someone who's seen/read a lot of matches than someone who spends most HSNCTs behind the scenes.

[BRizzle]

Sorry, I was wrong about the Berlioz question, it seems that a teammate and I overlooked information while researching him .

However, two of my main questions are still unanswered. Why is watching sports more important than learning about economics?
Secondly, why is so much of the geography American? Isn't a question on Akron biased towards an Ohio team? Or is this insignificant?

[Auroni]

RMS is a potential HSNCT middle part ONLY IF you discuss velocity and Graham's law of effusion.

That's just so drastically wrong.

Yeah, I really don't see how that's true.

maybe not "ONLY," but Graham's law contains a much more familiar example of a root-mean-squared quantity to the target audience of this set than the one asked about in the RLC circuits bonus

[SnookerUSF]

Hiya,

I think NAQT does need to do something more formal with moderators, like maybe some kind of qualification process, or at least a formal training session on the Friday night. I routinely heard that I was the first or maybe second moderator that a team had had that managed to get to 20+, more than one team said that they heard only 16 or 17 (one team said 15 tossups!). I would be interested in seeing what percentage of matches got to 20, I did hear that the tournament mean was like 21, but I wonder what the mode of questions read.

Perhaps some of the more experienced moderators should read a round (this could be fun) in front of new or inexperienced moderators and scorekeepers, and the players (also moderators) could reenact some of the issues that come up during a round that might slow down a reader (interruptions, saying answers really quietly, etc.). There is no excuse not to get to 20, I consider myself a slightly above-average moderator and I never went under 22. Above and beyond the structural considerations of the packet (tournament-wide distro) these schools pay too much to have that kind of thing go on a regular or even occasional basis and NAQT expends non-trivial amounts of resources in writing 156/156 (26 rounds 6 tossups/bonuses) to ignore this. Little things really help: separating the bonuses and tossups, flipping pages in anticipation, really paying attention to timing, and just paying attention.

The questions did seem quite good, a few noted exceptions aside, and thankfully they were quite noticeable because they were pretty rare. I thought that the current events were generally pretty reasonable things to ask about. I got a kick out of (read: painfully confused) at the bonus part which asked for the original host of the Today show in 1952 (Dave Garroway), apparently he had some connections to the local Chicago radio and TV scene in the 1940's and 50's, but it seems a stretch. Systematically, I thought some of the literature tossups lacked in concrete clues (vague plot summaries, cutesy descriptions, the Absalom, Absalom and Joe Christmas tossup comes to mind) and some of the lit bonuses seemed harder than they had to be.

Again, NAQT did a great job with logistics (especially given the split venue), and I enjoyed the opportunity to read for such good teams (I was lucky, I don't think I read one "bad match").

[Cheynem]

Yeah, I really think the Friday night scrimmage things could be better handled. As it is, it seems like quite a few people wander away from it still not with a solid grasp of the rules. I realize it's hard to schedule the scrimmaging, but it definitely could be done better.

[jagluski]

Hiya,

I think NAQT does need to do something more formal with moderators, like maybe some kind of qualification process, or at least a formal training session on the Friday night. I routinely heard that I was the first or maybe second moderator that a team had had that managed to get to 20+, more than one team said that they heard only 16 or 17 (one team said 15 tossups!). I would be interested in seeing what percentage of matches got to 20, I did hear that the tournament mean was like 21, but I wonder what the mode of questions read.

I just went through the stats dump from the prelim 15 rounds. To answer Ahmad's question:

15 tu: 2
16 tu: 5
17 tu: 16
18 tu: 55
19 tu: 63
20 tu: 123
21 tu: 164
22 tu: 180
23 tu: 153
24 tu: 113
25 tu: 66
26 tu: 59
27 tu: 1 (tiebreak)


This gives an average of 21.875 tossups per game. I think 22 tossups per game is a respectable average; however, I'm extremely disappointed to find out that 14% of the games heard less than 20 tossups. That's, quite frankly, unacceptable in my book.

[Captain Sinico]

maybe not "ONLY," but Graham's law contains a much more familiar example of a root-mean-squared quantity to the target audience of this set than the one asked about in the RLC circuits bonus

WRONG AGAIN! In my experience, most people will learn Graham's law in terms of effusion/diffusion rates, since that's what it actually is. Conversely, anyone who learns anything about AC circuits (not just RLC circuits) will probably learn about RMS quantities. I'd say that at best, they're known on the same order; the former is certainly not "much more familiar" than the latter.

M

[jdeliverer]

Maybe our schools' program is just crazy, but we have two students that took 2 years of AP Physics and weren't familiar with that material. Meanwhile Graham's law came up several times in both Honors and AP Chemistry.

[Bloodwych]

Speaking of stats, when can we expect to see them all?

Seconded and bumped.

I thought most of the tossups were well written, but some of the 3rd bonuses and even the 2nd bonuses were pretty hard, especially the lit and physics. But I guess that's just HSNCT.
Also, get rid of math comp. Please.

[pblessman]

Thanks to Joel for posting the stats on the number of questions read. Certainly an average of 22 is great, and I also agree that less than 20 is not good, and less than 18 is just plain scary. If I may make a suggestion: What if NAQT made a switch to 20 cycles OR 20 minutes, whichever comes first. No halftime and give both teams TWO timeouts per match so teams can take one in the middle if they want, or they can save timeouts for the end of the game. This would solve several problems:

1. Adding 11% time would allow any of the readers who completed 18 or more questions to get to 20, so we should have a miniscule percentage (2%?) of matches end up with less than 20 questions, and those will have 18 or 19.

2. There would still be some time pressure on moderators so they try to keep things going, so we shouldn't end up with rooms taking 45 minutes per round.

3. Some of the time pressure would be relieved, as people would be trying to get through 20 in 20 min, rather than 13 in 9 min, so stress should go down for everybody, and people should be easier to understand.

4. Time per match should still be well under 30 minutes, and only slightly longer than right now, as we are able to save some time by not having halftimes and most teams will not take both timeouts in most matches.

5. This would allow for more coaching, and as somebody has noted previously, high school coaching HAS improved, so there is a place for this. I, for one, would like to have another timeout at my disposal, so I could interrupt an early run AND calm my troops for the final questions in a close match.

[Frater Taciturnus]

Thanks to Joel for posting the stats on the number of questions read. Certainly an average of 22 is great, and I also agree that less than 20 is not good, and less than 18 is just plain scary. If I may make a suggestion: What if NAQT made a switch to 20 cycles OR 20 minutes, whichever comes first. No halftime and give both teams TWO timeouts per match so teams can take one in the middle if they want, or they can save timeouts for the end of the game.

This is the only part i have an issue with- I recommend that it should be whichever comes last, not first.

[DrCongo]

Secondly, why is so much of the geography American? Isn't a question on Akron biased towards an Ohio team? Or is this insignificant?

I'm don't think that this is a problem. It's like saying a toss up on the Great Salt Lake is biased towards a team from the Utah. It happens.

[centralhs]

Ahmad Ragab wrote:
Perhaps some of the more experienced moderators should read a round (this could be fun) in front of new or inexperienced moderators and scorekeepers, and the players (also moderators) could reenact some of the issues that come up during a round that might slow down a reader (interruptions, saying answers really quietly, etc.). There is no excuse not to get to 20, I consider myself a slightly above-average moderator and I never went under 22

Ahmad has read for us before at tournaments here in Georgia. He is one of the best readers that I have heard, both extremely fast but also very clear. After he read for us a few months ago, several of my students said "Why can't all readers be more like that?" It seems like it would be beneficial to have Ahmad (and/or other experienced "fast and clear" readers) lead a few practice rounds/sessions the day before the tournament where they can explain to less experienced readers how to get through lots of questions quickly without sacrificing quality.

[Joe Romersa]

Secondly, why is so much of the geography American? Isn't a question on Akron biased towards an Ohio team? Or is this insignificant?

On that note, would a current events question on, say, Chris Christies be biased towards a New Jersey team?

[Ben Dillon]

I just went through the stats dump from the prelim 15 rounds. To answer Ahmad's question:
15 tu: 2
16 tu: 5
17 tu: 16
18 tu: 55
19 tu: 63
20 tu: 123
21 tu: 164
22 tu: 180
23 tu: 153
24 tu: 113
25 tu: 66
26 tu: 59
27 tu: 1 (tiebreak)

Renewing my objection in another post that Tossups Heard is not as good an indication of reader speed/quality as Bonuses Heard. I'm not nearly as impressed with a reader who gets through 24+ tossups when I know several tossups went dead, especially if I thought that reader read so fast that it caused a few of those to go dead.

[Mechanical Beasts]

Ahmad Ragab wrote:
Perhaps some of the more experienced moderators should read a round (this could be fun) in front of new or inexperienced moderators and scorekeepers, and the players (also moderators) could reenact some of the issues that come up during a round that might slow down a reader (interruptions, saying answers really quietly, etc.). There is no excuse not to get to 20, I consider myself a slightly above-average moderator and I never went under 22

Ahmad has read for us before at tournaments here in Georgia. He is one of the best readers that I have heard, both extremely fast but also very clear. After he read for us a few months ago, several of my students said "Why can't all readers be more like that?" It seems like it would be beneficial to have Ahmad (and/or other experienced "fast and clear" readers) lead a few practice rounds/sessions the day before the tournament where they can explain to less experienced readers how to get through lots of questions quickly without sacrificing quality.

Well, the scrimmage rounds did make a point of pairing experienced with unexperienced moderators. I think the bigger thing is that moderators should be spread out more. As much as I like running a room with Hannah, we probably should be required to run separate rooms.

[GBRodgers12]

Secondly, why is so much of the geography American? Isn't a question on Akron biased towards an Ohio team? Or is this insignificant?

I'm don't think that this is a problem. It's like saying a toss up on the Great Salt Lake is biased towards a team from the Utah. It happens.

I think the important issue about this question is why is there so much American Geography? The regional bias is a non-issue to me, but the ratio of World to American Geography desperately needs fixed in my opinion.

[Not That Kind of Christian!!]

Renewing my objection in another post that Tossups Heard is not as good an indication of reader speed/quality as Bonuses Heard. I'm not nearly as impressed with a reader who gets through 24+ tossups when I know several tossups went dead, especially if I thought that reader read so fast that it caused a few of those to go dead.

Even if 0 tossups go dead, there is no reason that a reader shouldn't be able to get through 20 tossups. Andy and I never got through fewer than 21, I think, even when teams were letting everything go to the end. And, on that note,

I think the bigger thing is that moderators should be spread out more. As much as I like running a room with Hannah, we probably should be required to run separate rooms.

This is, unfortunately, true.

[kayli]

Yeah, it's definitely not impossible to convert every tossup AND read more than 20. I believe this happened in a match against Bellarmine.

[TheKingInYellow]

Just out of curiosity, who was the moderator in conference center room 45 on Sunday? I liked him a lot, but never really figured out who he was

[jonah]

Just out of curiosity, who was the moderator in conference center room 45 on Sunday? I liked him a lot, but never really figured out who he was

Aaron Layton.

[Cheynem]

One thing that I noticed was that the lit seemed to make an effort to downplay the sort of musty Allen Drury, Agatha Christie type literature that NAQT is stereotypically associated with. That doesn't mean the lit was perfect--it suffered from vagueness (Joe Christmas!) and some of the hard parts of bonuses were insanely difficult, but I hope this was an intentional step in a positive direction.

[etchdulac]

I just went through the stats dump from the prelim 15 rounds. To answer Ahmad's question:

15 tu: 2
16 tu: 5
17 tu: 16

How many of these 23 games involved teams that were 6-4 or better?

Even if 0 tossups go dead, there is no reason that a reader shouldn't be able to get through 20 tossups.

While I agree that the above numbers are poor, I'm not ready to draw the horizon of failure above 18 when two below-mediocre (but not awful) teams are involved. If no questions are powered, a vast majority of toss-up questions reach their ends and are answered correctly, every bonus part is read in its entirety followed by 5 seconds of discussion time, a prompt and a answer... throw in some brief delays for negs... I believe it's possible to be reading at a sufficient speed and still average just over a minute per cycle. While that may all sound like a bit of a "perfect storm", I think there are some games at a national event where a majority of cycles go like that.

[dtaylor4]

Renewing my objection in another post that Tossups Heard is not as good an indication of reader speed/quality as Bonuses Heard. I'm not nearly as impressed with a reader who gets through 24+ tossups when I know several tossups went dead, especially if I thought that reader read so fast that it caused a few of those to go dead.

This is foolish. I read on Saturday, and had a game where I got through 8 bonuses. Of course, about 1:44 was left on the clock when I finished. Is it necessarily my fault that two teams at nationals cannot answer a history tossup on Indonesia? I'm pretty sure my reading was not the problem, since the players were complimentary after the match.

[jbarnes112358]

For better or for worse, though, this was certainly the hardest HSNCT in recent memory - if "difficulty creep" is a real thing that's happening, this tournament suffered far more for that than for previously-decried NAQT issues. The bonuses, especially, fluctuated some but were on the whole too hard. It seemed like teams at even the highest levels of this tournament were getting 17 to 19 points per bonus (the stats will make or break this claim; for now it's a ballpark estimate)

If that's the right ballpark, then we will certainly have some work to do for 2011.

Compare the last four years' worth of stats:

(champion, team ranked x/2, team ranked x-5)
where x=field size

2009: 21.58, 10.91, 5.33

2008: 21.03, 10.48, 5.95

2007: 21.73, 13.01, 6.58

2006: 20.59, 14.44, 5.98

That's actually very consistent, the only obvious trend being that the performance of the median team is dropping slightly. (That would appear to be a logical consequence of expanding the field size for constant difficulty; by contrast, there is a larger pool of replacement-level teams capable of converting about half of the easy parts.)

If, in fact, this year's Maggie Walker and State College teams were under 19 ppb (I have no idea, since I was reading on Saturday and didn't spend any time in the stat rooms), then my instinct is that the bonus difficulty would have been very punishing to teams 120 or so on down. Maybe that happened.

I went back through my score sheets and unofficially computed our points per bonus as 20.85 (20.94 on Sat. and 20.69 on Sun). Although that is in line with recent years, I perceived that, on the whole, the bonuses were a bit more difficult than usual. Furthermore, in previous years there were not any of those insane 5 second computation questions.

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

We practiced on every set of last year's HSNCT before we went to Chicago this year. And on the sets that we didn't see (we heard i think 18 or 19 rounds, including our scrimmages on Sunday morning last year) we averaged slightly over 15ppb. So that was our goal this year, knowing/thinking that the set would likely be a pinch harder than that.

While we started very poorly this year in our first few games, our overall ppb ended up exactly 13.81. That's close, but i think the bonuses were slightly harder this time around. Or, if anything, without the ridiculous math computation, i think we might have hit our goal.

Keeping stats was pretty fun. Of interest, Trey's pp20tuh increased in almost every game throughout the tournament, starting at 19.05 after game 1, to 36.36 after game 5, to 52.56 after game 10, to 55.73 after our 12th and last game, even as we faced better teams as the day went on. It basically proves that our slow start hurt him pretty bad, but that my other players had the exact opposite effect and got less questions later in the tournament.

[Captain Sinico]

Renewing my objection in another post that Tossups Heard is not as good an indication of reader speed/quality as Bonuses Heard. I'm not nearly as impressed with a reader who gets through 24+ tossups when I know several tossups went dead, especially if I thought that reader read so fast that it caused a few of those to go dead.

This is foolish. I read on Saturday, and had a game where I got through 8 bonuses. Of course, about 1:44 was left on the clock when I finished. Is it necessarily my fault that two teams at nationals cannot answer a history tossup on Indonesia? I'm pretty sure my reading was not the problem, since the players were complimentary after the match.

I'm not sure if it's quite foolish, but maybe not precise. I think rather that tossups heard is possibly a weaker correlate to moderator speed than bonuses heard. Neither is independent of team quality or strategy; a match between two good teams that power a ton of questions and know and snap up the vast majority of bonus parts is going to kick up any moderator's BH (and TH.) A team like that from this weekend was Georgetown Day. Conversely, teams that gets a lot of tossups and take the full time on every bonus - Seven Lakes and LASA were like that this weekend - is going to cap BH and a match between teams that simply don't get many tossups is going to do so stringently.
So I'd say that, really, any raw number is probably going to fail to give a good sense of moderator speed unless the moderator is reading for a well-averaged sample of games. To evaluate a moderator, it's really necessary to look a little closer than that.

M

[jdeliverer]

Renewing my objection in another post that Tossups Heard is not as good an indication of reader speed/quality as Bonuses Heard. I'm not nearly as impressed with a reader who gets through 24+ tossups when I know several tossups went dead, especially if I thought that reader read so fast that it caused a few of those to go dead.

This is foolish. I read on Saturday, and had a game where I got through 8 bonuses. Of course, about 1:44 was left on the clock when I finished. Is it necessarily my fault that two teams at nationals cannot answer a history tossup on Indonesia? I'm pretty sure my reading was not the problem, since the players were complimentary after the match.

I'm not sure if it's quite foolish, but maybe not precise. I think rather that tossups heard is possibly a weaker correlate to moderator speed than bonuses heard. Neither is independent of team quality or strategy; a match between two good teams that power a ton of questions and know and snap up the vast majority of bonus parts is going to kick up any moderator's BH (and TH.) A team like that from this weekend was Georgetown Day. Conversely, teams that gets a lot of tossups and take the full time on every bonus - Seven Lakes and LASA were like that this weekend - is going to cap BH and a match between teams that simply don't get many tossups is going to do so stringently.
So I'd say that, really, any raw number is probably going to fail to give a good sense of moderator speed unless the moderator is reading for a well-averaged sample of games. To evaluate a moderator, it's really necessary to look a little closer than that.

M

If one had enough stats, one could evaluate a moderator compared to teams' averages in TUH and BH, sort of like ERA+. This might be too complicated to work out, but it'd give a better indication than raw numbers

[samer]

Renewing my objection in another post that Tossups Heard is not as good an indication of reader speed/quality as Bonuses Heard. I'm not nearly as impressed with a reader who gets through 24+ tossups when I know several tossups went dead, especially if I thought that reader read so fast that it caused a few of those to go dead.

This is foolish. I read on Saturday, and had a game where I got through 8 bonuses. Of course, about 1:44 was left on the clock when I finished. Is it necessarily my fault that two teams at nationals cannot answer a history tossup on Indonesia? I'm pretty sure my reading was not the problem, since the players were complimentary after the match.

I'm not sure if it's quite foolish, but maybe not precise. I think rather that tossups heard is possibly a weaker correlate to moderator speed than bonuses heard. Neither is independent of team quality or strategy; a match between two good teams that power a ton of questions and know and snap up the vast majority of bonus parts is going to kick up any moderator's BH (and TH.) A team like that from this weekend was Georgetown Day. Conversely, teams that gets a lot of tossups and take the full time on every bonus - Seven Lakes and LASA were like that this weekend - is going to cap BH and a match between teams that simply don't get many tossups is going to do so stringently.
So I'd say that, really, any raw number is probably going to fail to give a good sense of moderator speed unless the moderator is reading for a well-averaged sample of games. To evaluate a moderator, it's really necessary to look a little closer than that.

M

If one had enough stats, one could evaluate a moderator compared to teams' averages in TUH and BH, sort of like ERA+. This might be too complicated to work out, but it'd give a better indication than raw numbers

It's not too hard, actually; you already have the TU heard/B heard numbers for the teams anyways, so it's just a matter of comparing the moderator's TU/game (etc.) to the average for the teams for which the moderator read. [As an example, a moderator is doing fine if he gets 23/21 for two teams that average 21/18, but not for two teams that average 25/23.]

[Deviant Insider]

The only useful purpose of this statistic is to figure out which moderators should not have been moderating at a national tournament. To figure that out, you figure out who moderated for more than one match that did not get through at least 18 tossups and don't invite them back. The ones that missed the target once or were consistently only getting to 18 or 19 you only invite back if you have difficulty getting enough moderators, or you pair them with a good moderator and tell them to read as little as possible. I fail to see why this requires any statistics beyond what is commonly taught to 2nd graders.

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

The only useful purpose of this statistic is to figure out which moderators should not have been moderating at a national tournament. To figure that out, you figure out who moderated for more than one match that did not get through at least 18 tossups and don't invite them back. The ones that missed the target once or were consistently only getting to 18 or 19 you only invite back if you have difficulty getting enough moderators, or you pair them with a good moderator and tell them to read as little as possible. I fail to see why this requires any statistics beyond what is commonly taught to 2nd graders.

Yep. I just don't understand how you can't read faster. Guy (with Ian scorekeeping) got through 26 tossups with more than a minute remaining (it might have been two minutes) in our first playoff game, and we're a team that gets a lot of tossups but usually a little later, and we often need 3-5 seconds on bonus questions. But yet he got through all the questions with lots of time to spare and was clear, coherent, and generally excellent. It really isn't that hard folks.

[samer]

The only useful purpose of this statistic is to figure out which moderators should not have been moderating at a national tournament. To figure that out, you figure out who moderated for more than one match that did not get through at least 18 tossups and don't invite them back. The ones that missed the target once or were consistently only getting to 18 or 19 you only invite back if you have difficulty getting enough moderators, or you pair them with a good moderator and tell them to read as little as possible. I fail to see why this requires any statistics beyond what is commonly taught to 2nd graders.

Hypothetical situation, same packet:
Room A: 18/17
Room B: 20/15

If anything, moderator A is quite likely to have read more in 18 minutes than moderator B, but by your suggestion above, moderator A would immediately be in danger of being disinvited, while moderator B wouldn't.

Yes, moderators who clearly shouldn't be moderating at this level obviously should not be doing so, but, given the high need for moderators for an event this large, I'd rather see NAQT judge moderators on a more nuanced basis rather than just blindly applying a set of rules.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Who cares?

[Dresden_The_BIG_JERK]

The only useful purpose of this statistic is to figure out which moderators should not have been moderating at a national tournament. To figure that out, you figure out who moderated for more than one match that did not get through at least 18 tossups and don't invite them back. The ones that missed the target once or were consistently only getting to 18 or 19 you only invite back if you have difficulty getting enough moderators, or you pair them with a good moderator and tell them to read as little as possible. I fail to see why this requires any statistics beyond what is commonly taught to 2nd graders.

Hypothetical situation, same packet:
Room A: 18/17
Room B: 20/10

Which moderator did the better job?

I'd say neither did spectacularly given the circumstances, but overall its about the same.

Who cares?

People who like more accurate results? Think of it this way: If a Team A averages hearing two less questions a round on Saturday than Team B, that's essentially an entire round extra Team B heard. From a statistical analysis standpoint that's incredibly relevant.

[Captain Sinico]

Well, for one, one is often in the situation of having to make the best of a pool of bad moderators, so such stats have some value in that regard. For two, they could be used to guide improvement in certain moderators.

M

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Yo BJ, I was responding to Samer's very silly hypothetical example, which I don't see as at all worth discussing, not the general idea that we should talk about fixing moderator quality.

[Dresden_The_BIG_JERK]

Yo BJ, I was responding to Samer's very silly hypothetical example, which I don't see as at all worth discussing, not the general idea that we should talk about fixing moderator quality.

My mistake...carry on.

[samer]

Yo BJ, I was responding to Samer's very silly hypothetical example, which I don't see as at all worth discussing, not the general idea that we should talk about fixing moderator quality.

My point was that according to David's suggestion, moderator A would be "OK," while moderator B would immediately be "in danger" of being disinvited from future NCTs. I'll make that clearer.

[Deviant Insider]

People moderate more than one match, and my guess is that the 20/10 moderator would have a few matches where s/he did not reach 20.

[samer]

People moderate more than one match, and my guess is that the 20/10 moderator would have a few matches where s/he did not reach 20.

20/10, as Charlie pointed out, is a bit of a straw man (although it's not out of the realm of possibility), but my point still remains that I would use "failure to reach X TUs" as a screen, not an automatic disqualifier.

[Dresden_The_BIG_JERK]

People moderate more than one match, and my guess is that the 20/10 moderator would have a few matches where s/he did not reach 20.

20/10, as Charlie pointed out, is a bit of a straw man (although it's not out of the realm of possibility), but my point still remains that I would use "failure to reach X TUs" as a screen, not an automatic disqualifier.

Yes and no. One match of 20/10 can be an anomaly...if someone was 20/10 for the tourney, that would rightly draw red flags, despite being over the hypothetical threshold.

[kayli]

Sort of off of topic, but why are there questions on comic books but like none of manga or anime. I'm pretty sure manga and anime are more popular than comic books for anyone under 30.

[Captain Sinico]

I've been dreading this day for a long time.

M

[Auroni]

several critical quizbowl theorists would be quick to point out that almost everyone playing HSNCT is also over the age of 13, which is when they should have outgrown the anime/manga craze

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

several critical quizbowl theorists would be quick to point out that almost everyone playing HSNCT is also over the age of 13, which is when they should have outgrown the anime/manga craze

Tell that to my college roommates from 5 years ago.

[Haaaaaaaarry Whiiiiiiiiiite]

several critical quizbowl theorists would be quick to point out that almost everyone playing HSNCT is also over the age of 13, which is when they should have outgrown the anime/manga craze

But then you're discriminating against the seventh grader!

[kayli]

A lot of people watch anime in high school and college >_>. I think in terms of trash, comic books are a little dated while anime and manga have been gaining a steady following. Ideally, there's no trash in HSNCT or any national tournament. But, while there is still trash, I don't understand why comic books can be represented but not manga or anime.